Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.

I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.

I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.